Conducting polymer gel: formation of a novel semi-IPN from polyaniline and crosslinked poly(2-acrylamido-2-methyl propanesulphonicacid)

Hydrogels for Soft Machines

“…[85,145,146] While electronics depends on electron conduction in solids, ionic conductivity is key to electrochemical devices such as batteries and fuels cells, and proton conduction is important in many biological processes. Nafion and similar sulfonated fluoropolymers are essentially two-phase proton-conducting gels.…”

Size-dependent elastic modulus of single electroactive polymer nanofibers

“…[16][17][18] However, such a PAMPS polymer has shown very low elastic modulus of 0.051 MPa in the fully swollen bulk state. 19 PAMPS with an average molecular weight of 2 ϫ 10 6 g / mol was used as the polymer material for fabricating nanofibers and was dissolved to a concentration of 15 wt % in water. The PAMPS solution and ethyl alcohol were purchased from the Aldrich Chemical Co. ͑Milwaukee, WI͒.…”

Interfacial polymerization to high-quality polyacrylamide/polyaniline composite hydrogels

“…1b, inset). For comparison, the inner portion of the composite hydrogel synthesized via the conventional sequential IPN method is found to be colourless when the sample is thicker than 3 mm [6]. Also different from the conventional method, the content of the PAn component can be easily controlled and increased to a high value in the interfacial polymerization simply by modulating the concentration of APS in the aqueous phase and An in the organic phase.…”

“…Composite hydrogels containing conducting polymer components have been attracting increasing attention in the past decade because the materials combine the mechanical properties of hydrogels and the specific transport properties of conducting polymers [2,3]. Nowadays, besides the blending procedure by combining conducting polymer granules with hydrogel matrix [4,5], one of the most frequently utilized methods for the synthesis of conducting polymer composite hydrogels is the three-step sequential IPN (interpenetrating polymer network) method [6]. This method requires the preparation of the crosslinked matrix hydrogel (step 1), the impregnation of the matrix hydrogel in the solution of the conducting polymer monomers (step 2) and finally the exposure of the hydrogel to oxidant solution (step 3) in order to promote the formation of the conducting polymers within the matrix hydrogel [7,8].…”

“…In this process, an obvious and intractable problem is that the conducting polymer monomers are easy to leach out from the matrix hydrogel and polymerize in the solution, resulting in serious waste of reagents and also environmental pollution. Moreover, during the oxidation process (step 3), the formed conducting polymers often block the pores on the surfaces of the matrix hydrogel, preventing the diffusion of the oxidant into the hydrogel and thus leading to the inhomogeneity of the resulting composite hydrogels [6]. Consequently, for the development and applications of conducting polymer hydrogels in the fields of electrosensors, capacitors and artificial muscles [9][10][11], it is urgent for chemists and materials scientists to develop more economical and effective approaches to fabricate high-quality conducting polymer hydrogel materials.…”